Recipes and food fun from Apt 3N

If ever you’ve craved a cookie so intensely chocolately, with little to meddle with it pure chocolate flavor (no nuts, no eggs, and a high cocoa to flour ratio), then this cookie is it.

I first made these about 1 year ago when I made my first ice box cake…for 50 people. I must have made 4 batches. Probably could have made less if I hadn’t been snacking on them along the way.

These cookies mimic the famous Nabisco Chocolate Wafers that most icebox cake recipes call for. For some reason, they’ve been discontinued in store, and are only available online. Every time I attempt to purchase some, that little voice in my head goes “hydrogenated oils…preservatives” then I head to the kitchen to make my own. They are easy to make, hard to mess up, and I always have the ingredients on hand.
It’s hard to tell when these cookies are done, since they are so dark. I usually just go by 10 minutes, as the recipe indicates. Since the cocoa is the predominant flavor, quality really matters. And unfortunately, it is one of those slightly fussy recipes in that it requires dutch-processed cocoa (cocoa powder that’s been alkalized, making it less acidic than natural cocoa powder). You could try to use a natural cocoa powder, such as Ghirardelli (I wouldn’t recommend Hershey’s for these), but you may need to increase the baking soda. I haven’t tried it yet, but if you do, please let me know!
As these cookies cool, they become crisp, which is why they work so well in icebox cakes, and in this week’s case, ice cream cake. More on that coming soon!

They absorb the moisture from the surrounding medium without getting too soggy. They aren’t as heavy as say a brownie or a chocolate chip cookie, so you can satisfy your chocolate craving with a fraction of the guilt.

Directions

In the bowl of your stand mixer, or in a large bowl using a handheld electric mixer, cream together the butter and both sugars for 2 minutes at medium speed. Add vanilla and beat until combined.

In a medium bowl, sift the flour, cocoa, baking soda. Add salt and stir to combine.
With the mixer running on low, slowly add the dry ingredients to the butter/sugar mixture. Stop to scrape down the sides of the bowl occasionally. Once all the flour’s been added, add the milk and mix until combined.

Lay a piece of plastic wrap on a flat surface. Dump cookie dough directly onto the plastic wrap, in a log-like shape. Wrap up the dough with the plastic wrap and continue to shape into an even-width log. Refrigerate for at least 1 hour.

Preheat oven to 350 degrees F. Score cookie dough with a ruler 1/4in apart. Slice the log into 1/4in thick disks and place disks on a cookie sheet lined with parchment paper. Bake for 7 to 8 minutes. Refrigerate the remaining cookie dough. Then rotate baking sheet and bake for 2 minutes more. Allow to cool for a few minutes before transferring to a wire rack to cool completely.

Continue with remaining cookie dough. Wrap well and store at room temperature.

*I only had light brown sugar in stock, so I added half a tablespoon of molasses to substitute for the dark brown sugar.

The first time I had crepes was in Paris in 2006. Kids coming home from school were snacking on this conical things wrapped in paper filled with all kinds of chocolately/fruity goodness. My buddy and I did not hesitate. We got ourselves some crepes filled with nutella and slices of banana and our minds were blown. So delicious and, as I’d soon discover, so easy to make, with such simple ingredients?!

Flash forward to 2017 and I’ve made it 34098734287234 times. I’ve filled them with sautéed mushrooms and swiss cheese to serve to guests. With scrambled eggs and spinach for a savory breakfast. Most often though, with nutella/banana or simply with strawberry jam for my sweet-toothed family. It is the THE most requested breakfast item, surpassing pancakes, waffles, french toast, everything. Which works for me since it’s SO EASY and cooks much faster than all those other options.

I’ve pretty much stuck to Alton Brown’s recipe all these years, tweaking it only by adding whole wheat flour and a pinch of salt (it was the only thing missing). For many years I’ve mixed the batter by hand using a whisk, which was a monumental mistake. You end up with lumps of flour in the batter that only go away after the batter sits for a while, hydrating the lumps away. As soon as I started using a blender, I never looked back.

Ingredients

Directions

Melt butter in a small saucepan or in the non-stick skillet. Set aside.

In a blender, add first five ingredients and blend on low speed, gradually increasing the speed to high. Blend for about 20 seconds. Add melted butter and blend once more for 10 seconds.

Heat a 9 or 10in non stick skillet to medium heat. Pour 1/3 cup of the batter into a liquid measuring cup. Lift the pan up slightly above the flame and pour the batter onto the pan, tilting the pan around gently so the batter swirls and spreads evenly across the surface. Return to flame and cook for about a minute or until the sides start to loosen from the pan. Flip and cook for 30 seconds more. Remove from pan and set on plate. Continue with remaining batter, stacking the crepes on a plate.

How can I explain to you how good these are? Do the pictures do justice to them? Are you drooling on your keyboard? If so, then I’ve done my job. Though I have a confession to make: I’ve never made short ribs before. I’ve never even had them before, you know, as a separate entity. Sure, I’ve eaten them as part of a larger curry, but not like this. But hooray for internet, right? I checked my cookbooks and could not find anything for boneless ribs. They all had recipes for bone-in ribs, the type that you braise in a casserole. Balsamic braised. Beer braised. Red wine braised. But then, I found this recipe for easy bbq boneless ribs! And though I was grateful for Sunny Anderson’s (easy) cooking technique, I knew I wanted an Asian BBQ type thing, something rich in soy sauce and garlic with a hint of sesame flavor, but not one that was so authentic I needed to make an extra trip to my local Asian grocery. Na’m sayin? In keeping with halal guidelines, I’ve never had korean or japanese bbq (I doubt any halal establishments exist in NY). But I knew I really wanted to try Korean BBQ short ribs, or Kalbi. The problem is, you need a special cut of short ribs to prepare in that way – called the flanken cut. And if I had thought a little bit in advance, I could have convinced my friends at Honest Chops to hook it up. But I didn’t. And here we are. For this post, I took a page out of my research days, when, clueless about coding, I’d have to piece together bits from existing code, tweak it according to my data, and try to make some science! So I took a little from a recipe here, a recipe there, and badda bing badda boom. Definitely feel free to swap out the regular soy sauce for low-sodium. I served it here with rice, but I actually liked it better when it was shredded and wrapped in lettuce leaves. The cool, crisp texture and flavor of the lettuce worked perfectly with the slow cooked, soy sauce spiked flavor of the ribs. I used Sunny’s cooking technique with an adapted version of the Kalbi recipe below (I didn’t have an asian pear, and I wasn’t about to venture out into this torrential rainfall to get some). And I had to add chili flakes. Had to. I found by the end of the recommended 3 hours, the meat dried out a bit (that didn’t stop me from inhaling them). I did taste it at 2 hours, and it was tender enough. I would recommend for this amount of meat, 2 to 2 1/2 hours. And there is more than enough sauce. I actually used some of the leftover sauce to season some salmon. You can easily do 4 lbs of ribs in it.

For leftovers: shred the beef, mix with some mayo/lemon juice, and fill a pita or other flatbread with it and some lettuce. So good.